Curated by Dr Sarah Engledow, ‘The Look’ exhibits 68 photographic portraits of well-known Australians. It’s currently showing at NPG in Canberra and will travel to regional galleries over the next two years.
Featured portraits include Bryan Brown, Rose Byrne, Heath Ledger, Archie Roach (below), Ian Thorpe, Michael Hutchence, Tim Jarvis, Noni Hazlehurst, Layne Beachley, Anneliese Seubert (below), Marcia Langton, Nick Cave, and Ruby Hunter.
Photographers include Adam Knott, Greg Weight, Ian Darling, Bill McAuley, Michael Riley, Bruce Weber, Brett Canet-Gibson, Terry Milligan, Gary Grealy, Doug Gimesy, Dave Tacon, Nikki Toole, Jacqueline Mitelman, Andrew Maccol, Ingvar Kenne, and Karin Katt.
The Look runs until Sunday 9 February 2020 at The National Portrait Gallery, King Edward Terrace, Canberra.
Regional tour dates for 2020-21:
Geelong Gallery: Saturday 7th March until Sunday 3rd May 2020
Ipswich Art Gallery: Friday 12th February until Sunday 18th April 2021
Port Macquarie: Friday 7th May until Sunday 4th July 2021
Tweed Regional Gallery: Friday 16th July until Sunday 19th September 2021
Anneliese Seubert, 1997 (printed 2014), by Ingvar Kenne
Type C photograph (frame: 103.0 cm x 103.0 cm depth 3.8 cm, sheet: 100.0 cm x 100.0 cm)
Anneliese Seubert (b. 1973), fashion model, grew up in Cooma, New South Wales, her family having migrated from Germany when she was nine. She began modelling while a boarder at Canberra Girls’ Grammar School and was ‘discovered’ after becoming a finalist in the Dolly Covergirl competition in 1989. In 1990, aged seventeen, she won the Ford Models Supermodel of the World competition, but signed with the Paris-based agency Karin instead of the New York-based Ford. Over the next two decades Seubert walked the runway for almost all the major international design houses, including Dior, Hermes, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci and Versace; appeared in editorials for magazines such as Vogue, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle; and posed for leading fashion photographers including Mario Testino and Lillian Bassman. In recent years she has returned to Canberra, where she lives with her partner and two daughters, taking on occasional modelling jobs.
Invar Kenne studied photography at the University of Gothenburg in his native Sweden and travelled extensively before beginning to exhibit in Australia in 2001. He has been a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize six times in ten years, and won the prize in 2009.
Archie Roach, 1992 (printed 2010), by Bill McAuley
Type C photograph (sheet: 49.0 cm x 36.0 cm, image: 41.0 cm x 28.0 cm, frame: depth 4.3 cm)
Archie Roach (b. 1956), singer/songwriter, lived at Framlingham Mission before being removed from his parents at the age of four. At eleven he asked the couple he believed to be his parents why he was black and they were white; they told him his birth parents had died. His foster sister introduced him to the guitar and keyboards, and he began to play country music songs. At the age of fifteen, he was contacted by his natural sister, who told him their birth mother had just died. Bitterly, he spent the next fourteen years on the streets, battling alcoholism. He met his lifelong partner, the late Ruby Hunter, when she was sixteen. Having had children with her, and having beaten his alcohol dependency, he wrote his first song, ‘Took the Children Away’, which he performed on Melbourne radio and television in 1988. Spotted by one of Paul Kelly’s bandmembers, he was invited to open a Paul Kelly concert in early 1989. Kelly produced Roach’s first album, Charcoal Lane (1990), which was on the US Rolling Stone’s Top 50 albums for 1992, achieved gold sales in Australia, and earned Roach two ARIAs and a human rights award. Three more albums followed before the live compilation 1988, released in late 2009. Both solo and with his beloved Hunter, Roach has recorded and performed with many top Australian and international acts.